Hello Bloggers,

I hope everyone is doing well wherever they may be this reading break, whether it be tanning on the beach, slaying the slopes up in Whistler, or even resting in your own bed similar to Spahr’s poem. This last week, our class has been focusing on Poetry especially Juliana Spahr’s This Connection of Everyone with Lungs and a few other poems. Let’s get to it shall we?

Therese’s poem talked about the poem written on “September 1,1939” and how she did not feel that it associated with the remembrance of 9/11. I remember during our ASTU class when everyone was trying really hard to connect to it because we didn’t realize how it was not exactly the same trauma. From my memory, I remember reading it and initially thinking it was about 9/11 and the date was just some random title to throw us off about what the event actually was. Nonetheless, back to Therese, she argued that “they’re not experiencing the same things. They’re not feeling the same emotions.” which I had totally understood. To support her argument, she also argued that it wasn’t fair to only acknowledge one of the traumas but both the occurrence of Dresden as well and to “consider all victims”.

Moving onwards, a similarity that I found between two of the bloggers (Olivea and Kate) this week is the questioning if the poem “The Names” was actually written about 9/11. With Kate’s blog, she explained a comparison she had done on two poems, “Photograph from September 11” by Wislawa Szymborksa and “The Names” by Billy Collins. I personally thought it was really neat how she saw one through a positive light and the other through a negative. In addition, she saw noticed that one gave a more specific perception of the day of 9/11 whereas the other one was rather a review of the mourning and the post-trauma days. Similar to Therese, she argued that poems with violence “could easily be other traumas as well” therefore poems on 9/11 needed to be more specific or could be mistinterpreted.

Two other blogs that struck out to me were Clara’s and Joseph’s. Clara in her blog post was a little upset as to how she did not understand Spahr’s poem until she had digested it thoroughly. One line which perfectly described how I saw it as well was “This idea of connection is one that I think we as humans lose when we start to classify and to categorize people and things (essentially divide people)” In addition, I found it really interesting how she connected it back to Judith Butler’s essay on who is worth keeping with the question of who is more valuable to keep on this world and the theory around that. On the other hand, Joseph created his own poem from the similar perspective of Spahr of being in a bed which was when he wrote the poem as well. Moreover, he also attempted the mixture of creating a poem with both lyric and language poetry.

Connecting the whole bed aspect with Erin’s blog, Erin explained at how disappointed she was with the idea of Spahr being in bed and talking about the corrupt things going around her rather than doing something about it. She also further talks about the term “eyewitness”, but my question is, what is truly is an “eyewitness”? because throughout the poem, it allows an eyewitness to simply be a person gathering information from the news. However, isn’t a real eyewitness someone who needs to be physically there? Are we not going out of the bounds of this term by allowing people to be anywhere and be called an eyewitness? I guess this is where the first person and third person eyewitness comes to play……But continuing Erin’s blog, I really enjoyed how she ends questioning if Spahr is writing her poem through her bed because she’s implying that we should create the change then merely just doing nothing about it at home like she is in the poem.

Great blogs everyone & thanks for listening!

Have an amazing break!

-mel

Hey there bloggers!

It’s finally my turn to recap on everything that has been said throughout this week’s blogs! I have to admit, the blogs only keep getting better and better each time!

To get things rolling,

It wasn’t a doubt that many of the bloggers would be talking about Persepolis and Hillary Chute’s Article, The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. However, there were a few blogs which stuck out that brought their own personal ideas.

Starting with one that really stuck out to me was Clara’s blog. This blog post focused on how she came from two different backgrounds which spoke strongly to me especially being Eurasian myself. The whole concept of culture differences is exactly what I have to go through everyday as well. In comparison to the novel, she addressed the “clash between the Islamic’s states values and Marji’s values” including how the state doesn’t compromise with it’s citizens which I found really clever.

Moving forward, Joseph’s blog was quite the interesting piece, if I do say so myself.  If I could compare his thought process to political science, I’d say it is very similar to the whole root thinking process (which I found really confusing in class, so if you understand it; please help a girl out). With his critical thinking, he centered his focus on the big theme of the graphics being black and white. He also compared the theme to good and bad, discussing about perfectionism and how we’d all be hopeless if we constantly strive for a perfect answer. Other bloggers (Magda, Maria, Martin, Olivea, Paolina and Sandra) also focused on how valuable Satrapi’s monochromatic graphics visualized her story to them as readers. All three girls (Magda, Olivea, and Sandra) brought the word “thickness” (98) which portrayed power and depth. On the other hand, Martin and Paolina questioned the whole idea of not having color and how effective it was being black and white. In addition, many of those who focused on the black-ness in the comic related it to emptiness and how it’s connected to the process of remembering.

A line that really jumped at me while reading the blogs came from Paolina’s which was “She prepares the stage but still leaves enough space for the readers own thoughts and interpretation.” Similar to Kennedy’s, they both found themselves “seeing comics in a whole new light”. They also both noticed that Satrapi took advantage of the genre which added a new dimension to graphic narratives. One reoccurring image that many of the bloggers (Magda, Therese, Kennedy, Kate, Peter) included was from Persepolis found on page 52. Each of them took the photo as evidence to prove the fact that the story was seen through a naïve child’s perspective. The body which was so precisely cut into equal pieces with no blood in sight showed how unrealistic the narrative was. However, they all agreed that it spoke to Marjane’s creativity and how the words ended up becoming more horrific than the images themselves.

On a different aspect, three bloggers (Martin, Therese and Gabriel) focused on how violence is now escalating to become a “normal” thing. Martin claims that “these events happen so often we become quick to look past them” which I find very true with today’s society. Similarly, Therese explained how movies make violence a common thing and how Satrapi pictures violence in a minimalist style to create a bigger effect. Digging deeper into Therese’s concept of how violence is gradually becoming desensitized. My big questions are; Why are people so intrigued by watching violent films? Why do we find ourselves so easy to accept violence shown in the media? What made us so desensitized in the first place? Now these are some questions to ask because in my opinion I find it quite horrific.

On a side note, good luck with midterms everyone!

See you around,

Mel